Size matters. Four existing LACMA buildings will be replaced with a single pavilion with two thirds of the existing gallery space and half the wall space, at a time when the museum should be doubling its square footage. Paintings and entire collections will disappear into storage, perpetually lost to public view.

HOW SMART IS THAT?

The museum has consistently obscured, understated, or misstated just how much smaller the replacement building will be, and it never admitted the museum needed to expand—not shrink—to house collections that have vastly grown over the last generation:

Question for the museum: Just how do you stuff 100 pounds of something into a 25-pound sack?

Museum’s answer: You put 75 pounds into storage somewhere, and maybe you call that storage “satellite galleries.” Then you fail to mention thesatellite galleries all together add up to only a 5-pound sack.

Sometimes less is less. Shrinking the museum is like dismantling the Encyclopedia Britannica in favor of Cliffs Notes.